B09
For the 6th participation in Paris Photo, MIYAKO YOSHINAGA presents two acclaimed Asian artists whose experimentations traverse the boundary between documentation and expression.
Korean photographer Joo Myung Duck (b. 1940)’s landscapes from the 1990s are dark, skyless mountain scenes with slowly revealing details. Joo’s black-and-white "Lost Landscape" series, reduces dense and flattened patterns of trees, reeds, or flowers, creates paths into abstract realms of the senses. His 2011 "Color Abstract" series navigates through ordinary urban surfaces such as walls, floors, and old paint intertwined with the passage of time and memory, erasing reality by shooting at extremely close range.
Contrary to Duck's plein-air approach, Japanese photographer Hitoshi Fugo (b.1947) chose to begin shooting his "KAMI" series (2001-) in his studio. This series experimentally records each destructive stage of a roll of paper half-burned in a fire and cut with a chainsaw. The detailed textures and irregular shapes are carefully staged despite the velocity of the violence. The series delves into multifaceted expressions of beauty and other essentials underlying objects whose practicality and identity are entirely dismantled. (He reshot the same roll of paper in 2023, making this series ongoing.)
